Bay Area Walgreens' fresh food program rolls out

Andrew S. Ross

Published 4:00 am, Monday, May 16, 2011

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

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Sushi, sandwiches, fruit and other healthy choices are available at Walgreens at 43rd Avenue in the Outer Richmond on May 16, 2011. This store is one of 30 stores in the Bay Area where the drug chain is rolling out a pilot program stocking fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthy food options. less

Sushi, sandwiches, fruit and other healthy choices are available at Walgreens at 43rd Avenue in the Outer Richmond on May 16, 2011. This store is one of 30 stores in the Bay Area where the drug chain is rolling ... more

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 2 of 3

Mangos, pears and other healthy choices are available at Walgreens at 43rd Avenue in the Outer Richmond on May 16, 2011. This store is one of 30 stores in the Bay Area where the drug chain is rolling out a pilot program stocking fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthy food options. less

Mangos, pears and other healthy choices are available at Walgreens at 43rd Avenue in the Outer Richmond on May 16, 2011. This store is one of 30 stores in the Bay Area where the drug chain is rolling out a ... more

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 3 of 3

Sushi among other healthy choices is available at Walgreens at 43rd Avenue in the Outer Richmond on May 16, 2011. This store is one of 30 stores in the Bay Area where the drug chain is rolling out a pilot program stocking fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthy food options. less

Sushi among other healthy choices is available at Walgreens at 43rd Avenue in the Outer Richmond on May 16, 2011. This store is one of 30 stores in the Bay Area where the drug chain is rolling out a pilot ... more

The array of vittles, spotted at a Walgreens in San Francisco's Outer Richmond, is part of a Bay Area pilot program focused on "consumers looking for more healthy food alternatives," said Robert Elfinger, a spokesman for the Deerfield, Ill., drug store chain.

"Our San Francisco area customers are already buying a lot of food in our stores, and there are requests for more product offerings," he said.

In addition to the items listed above - and Walgreens' more traditional offerings, including candy, potato chips and soda - there'll be meats, wraps, soups "and other on-the-go meal options, as well as convenient alternatives for tonight's meal," said Elfinger.

The Outer Richmond store, which began stocking its fresh food shelves last week, is one of approximately 30 in the Bay Area where the pilot program will roll out through the summer.

"As we learn from this initial test, we believe there's potential to expand this offering to more stores in the Bay Area," said Elfinger.

In September, Walgreens started a pilot program in Chicago focusing on "food deserts" - neighborhoods underserved by grocery stores. "We made a commitment to seek solutions for offering these communities more fresh and healthy food options," said Mark Wagner, a Walgreens executive vice president, in announcing the Chicago program.

After Walgreens took over the Duane Reade drug store chain in New York, it expanded Duane Reade's "delish" line of fresh food. There are plans to start similar programs in several hundred Walgreens stores nationwide.

Apart from the health aspect - which has made some wonder why it continues to sell booze and cigarettes (except in San Francisco, where pharmacies are banned from selling the latter) - Walgreens is following in the footsteps of other major chain retailers, like Wal-Mart and Target, which are getting into the fresh food business in a major way.

"With our three fresh food pilot markets, we hope to give consumers more options and more reasons to visit our stores," said Elfinger.

Location, location: Walgreens sent us a list of 13 stores in San Francisco that have either started the program or will do so by the end of June:

Strauss-Khan is being held without bail after being pulled off a Paris-bound jet at JFK airport Saturday and charged with sexually assaulting a female housekeeper at a luxury Sofitel hotel in Manhattan earlier that day.

On Lipsky's shoulders now rest such small matters as Greece's financial meltdown and Europe's spreading sovereign debt woes, not to mention morale at IMF headquarters.

Lipsky, 64, obtained both his master's and doctorate in economics at Stanford and is currently an advisory board member of SIEPR. He was a vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, and an economist and researcher at Salomon Bros. and Chase Manhattan Corp.

Highly respected, by all accounts, Lipsky was supposed to be departing at the end of August when his five-year-term as the IMF's No. 2 was officially up. He agreed to remain as a "special adviser" through the G-20 summit in November at the request of Strauss-Kahn, who called Lipsky "an influential proponent of multilateralism and deeper financial surveillance."

Lipsky's experience at the IMF, including his handling of the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, "makes him uniquely qualified to help resolve the European sovereign debt" problems, Miranda Xafa, a former IMF deputy executive director, told Bloomberg News.

How long Lipsky sticks around - speculation is already brewing about a higher-profile permanent replacement for Strauss-Kahn - is another matter. "He'd be terrific in the short term, or the long-term," said Shoven.

In a December 2008 speech, Lipsky said the IMF needed "to undertake a more focused job of carefully identifying vulnerabilities and risks, and proposing specific remedies." Lipsky noted that U.S. banks' sleight-of-hand accounting, which kept dodgy assets off their balance sheets, "should have been flagged and dealt with before they caused the crisis."

Although Lipsky said he saw a "hopeful picture" of economic recovery at a March 2010 SIEPR conference, he warned of various dark clouds, "most serious, the ratcheting up of unemployment, especially in the United States.

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